April 15, 2003 - Branson, MO - 3 (2/10/03- Chiricahua National Monument)

Yesterday we "did" the Precious Moments Chapel and surrounding stuff.  Memorable.  I was admittedly a tad reluctant to drive almost 250 miles round trip from Branson to stand around looking at little figurines all day, but once there all traces of the reluctance disappeared.  I strongly urge any guy out there to take his lady to that venue and win some major points -- and have a ball in the process.  But tell me this.  How'm I gonna possibly get caught up with our website if all we do is create more stuff to enter here?  We'll post some of the 97 pictures we took at Precious Moments in their logical order, so be patient.  Great stuff is coming!

Yeah, still in "Cheer-a-cow-a"  (Chiricahua) National Monument.  Still taking pictures of rocks, still February.  Still impressive.

Now, these two last pictures are head-scratchers.  They're of the same rocks, just a closer look at a couple of them.  The gouge in the big fellow is understandable, because erosion is responsible for most the shapes here.  But then in the last picture, how can you account for the pattern at the upper part of the gouge?  Water doesn't make "pockets" on a vertical surface, does it?  With veins like that?  In a nearly square pattern?  How I wish I was 19 again.  I had all the answers back then.  (He still thinks he has most of them.  bj)

Besides worrying about a stiff breeze suddenly changing the landscape, the trail led us through some pretty narrow passages.  And how 'bout that sheer flat surface?  Amazing.  The color variation in the rocks was largely a function of plant matter.  Mostly lichens.

A yucca, we think, that broke off its tall stem.  Makes an interesting photo.  It's of the same family in any case.  And another of those "snakes" (bark) that curl up a dead tree, giving life to some upper branches.

The same tree from a bit of a distance. The live part is on the right, the "snake" just lying on top of a dead limb.

AHA!  One rock column wanted a nap!  I can relate to that.  And then these little pebbly things are on the side of the trail.  This is a nearly vertical shot.

They look like this close-up.  Kind of like hail stones.  They're caused by volcanic dust getting wet as it ascends, and then it hardens as it cools and comes back down.  Real interesting stuff here where we're cheering the cows.

Along the trail are these markers, giving distances to the next trail.  At first we thought we were going to walk along one trail, about 3 miles long.  A decent walk, but not a stretch for us on mostly flat trail.  Only that 3 mile trail led to another trail which led to another.  We figured by the end of the day we'd done about 5 miles.  That's close to our maximum comfortable stroll.  And, of course, there's the ubiquitous plaque explaining everything.  And that's the correct spelling for Cheer-a-cow-a, by the way.  Chiricahua just sounds like we're rooting for the cows.

As we were leaving the Monument, we got a chance to see some big wildlife.  Mule deer.  I'd earlier seen a Coatimundi (a mammal about the size of a raccoon with a long tail) which is pretty rare we're told.  Barb missed it, as it was in a hurry to get away from us, and I happened to be in the lead.